Robin Hunicke is a game designer and prodcer by training. Robin has a background in fine art, comptuer science and applied game studies. She will help spearhead the new inerdisciplinary undergraduate program in Games and Playable Media with Arts and Egineering at UC Santa Cruz.
Robin Hunicke is the Co-Founder of the independent game studio Funomena, located in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Hunicke was recruited to join Electronic Arts in 2005, where she worked on The Sims2, and then MySims and Steven Spielberg’s Boom Blox series for the Wii. In the spring of 2009, Hunicke left EA to join the independent game studio thatgamecompany, as Executive Producer of the award-winning Playstation Network title Journey. Returning to San Francisco in 2012, Robin co-founded her current studio with engineer and fellow Journey teammate Martin Middleton.
Recognized as an influential Woman in Games, Hunicke is also an outspoken evangelist for diversity of thought and participation in game design and game culture. She co-organizes the annual Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC, has chaired the IndieCade Festival of Independent Games, has published and lectured extensively on the "Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics" model of game design. Robin believes game developers can create novel, experimental designs by focusing on the feeling.
Hunicke will be teach ART 129 Special Topics with a focus on Game Design Winter 2015 and ART 80I Foundations of Play in Spring 2015.
Article on Robin on the main UCSC news page: http://news.ucsc.edu/2014/10/hunicke-games-art.html